The most astonishing fact about the Bible is the veneration and worship many believers subject it to. And when the believers read it -- if the actually read it -- it's as if the words do not mean what they usually do. Believers typically read all sorts of cultural and religious baggage into the texts they read, failing to grasp even the simplest message actually conveyed in it.
For example, sit down and read the so-called synoptic apocalypse, which can be found in Mt 24, Lu 21 and Mk 13. Yes, it's where Jesus allegedly foretells the end of the world. JWs are extremely enthusiastic about this text, and read it over and over again. Every JW knows Mt 24:14 by heart. Yet, even the simplest message in this text is systematically distorted by the reader, and this includes even many trained Bible scholars (the question "trained where" may explain that). We have for example Jesus saying "When YOU see this..." In the scenario, he is talking directly to an audience in 1st century Jerusalem. He says it will ALL happen in "this generation", over and over again. But do JWs, or practically any other religious denomination, actually believe that the text means what it says? Of course not.
The same could be said about every part of the Bible, from the first words in Genesis and onward. This is the only explanation why the Bible is taken seriously, and many even think it is a divine revelation. People don't read it, or, if they read it, they replace the words in the text with their own religious ideas.
The Bible is filled with ancient myths, absurdities, self-contradictions, pure hatred and the most vile acts imaginable, most performed in the name of the God who allegedly "inspired" the text.
If there was a God, and he was anything but the most evil and sadistic being in the universe, he'd struck down in anger anyone who came up with the absurd idea he had anything to do with writing and publishing the Bible, one of the most hateful books in existence.
- Jan
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Faith, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel. [Ambrose Bierce, The Devil´s Dictionary, 1911]
